


Fare Thee Well

by thelittledetective (bittersweetdistractor)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alzheimer's Disease, Angst, First Love, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Heterosexuality, Implied Character Death, M/M, Old Age, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post Reichenbach, Retirement, Sad, Sherlock AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:24:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittersweetdistractor/pseuds/thelittledetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock never thought it would end this way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fare Thee Well

**Author's Note:**

> Fare thee well my own true love  
> And farewell for a while.  
> I’m going away, but I’ll be back  
> If I go ten thousand miles.
> 
> (Fare Thee Well/Ten Thousand Miles - 18th century English ballad)

Dear John,

I told you once that heroes don't exist, but I lied. You existed, an almost bizarre contradiction, life and death mixed on your fingertips - if not a hero, then at least the closest to it that ever was. I don't even know why I'm writing to you now, when it's far too late to change anything. The universe continues to exist, the Earth continues to revolve around the Sun (I remember this now, it is a fact that I hold on to, even on the worse days when I can't even remember my own name and the only name I can remember is yours, and I act like a young man again and ask for you - but this is only what the attendants tell me), and I am still alone. 

What if...well, there are too many possibilities to detail each and every what-if scenario, and even if I could, I doubt that I would even remember them later on. Even my own handwriting is beginning to look strange to me. Some days I wonder if I wouldn't have this grotesque disease if you were still here. Some days I wonder if it is the fault of curses that follow me around, that have followed me around since the day I was born. Some days...some days I can't think of you because it hurts too much, it hurts in my heart (so contrary to what I've always said, I do indeed have a heart, and I hate it). Some days I wonder what would have happened if I had kissed you on that first day, or on the next, or on any of the following. Some days I can't remember that I didn't.

I'm leaving this letter for the attendants, and for your son, who comes to visit me on occasion. He acts and looks so much like you. I'm told that I've mistaken him for you on the worse days. They'll find it in the morning, after I'm dead. Remember how many times I told you not to let them use euphemisms for death in my obituary? I've put that in my will as well, since you're not around to remind anyone. Tonight is one of the only nights in which I have been completely present in my mind, and I can recall medications and chemicals that shouldn't be mixed, and I know I can have access to everything if I try, tonight. So it shall be in this letter that I say my final good-byes to you.

I have never been a sentimental man, nor one for dramatic revelations at the last minute, but in this case, I shall say what I must. I don't believe that you ever fully forgave me for faking my death, and so it was no great surprise when you married Mary (and so quickly after my return), and it was almost expected that she would prove to be truly good for you in every way which I was not. We never quite went back to the friendship that we had before my 'death', and I don't know why I thought it might happen otherwise. I underestimated you, yet again - not for the first or the last time. 

Sometimes I wondered why I kept you around, with your normalcy and your occasional insistence on mundane routines, and your silly jumpers and tea and blog. Other days I wondered why I even thought about running from you and your unwavering loyalty. And at other times, I was too busy with my work to think about you at all. 

Now I regret much, and remember little, but most of all, I savor the moments that we spent in companionable silence, for it is the best silence that I have ever known.

I told you once, that heroes don't exist, but I lied.

Farewell,

Sherlock


End file.
